


Amaranthine Red

by rhoswenmahariel (salutationtothestars)



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: The Last Court
Genre: F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Orlesians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-28 23:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8467885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salutationtothestars/pseuds/rhoswenmahariel
Summary: After the Huntress's daring rescue of the Wayward Bard from the Horned Knight's court, she pauses to take account of what has been lost, and what might have been gained.





	

As soon as she shut her bedroom chamber door, leaving her long-suffering seneschal still sputtering in the hall, Ursule reached for the ties binding her mask in place. She wanted it off, and wanted it off now. Part of the mask had chipped, its ragged edge digging into her cheek where cuts already existed, and it was oppressively hot. Her fingers struggled with the intricate knots, pricked raw by thorns, still half-frozen with the unnatural forest chill.

“ _Merde_ ,” she growled. Had she been in another mood, she might have called for a servant, but her blood still boiled. Rage she thought she’d left behind in the Applewoods clawed at her, focused in on her Maker-forsaken mask and her damnable hands. Finally, when her patience completely severed, she reached for the knife at her belt and broke the ribbon at her temple. The mask fell to the floor and broke into three pieces, with an unsatisfactory crash. She scuffed at it with a boot, feeling a little remorse. It had been one of her favorites, once, a pretty thing of white porcelain to match her skin.

It hardly mattered. There were more, endless masks given as gifts or crafted to match the latest trend, pale reflections of whatever was in season in Val Royeaux. None of them were the mask she truly wanted.

Leaving the remains behind, Ursule wiped at her sweaty forehead with a sleeve and went about readying herself for bed. As she undressed, piling her hunting clothes in one corner for someone to wash and mend in the morning, she managed to avoid looking at herself in the mirror much longer than she thought possible. A part of her burned to look, to survey and account for exactly what the Horned Knight had cost her, but the other part was patient. She donned her nightgown, thin black material designed for show more than practicality, like much of Orlesian fashion, and washed her face with no urgency. The open wounds stung, and would likely require a healer’s touch if she did not want any more scars. Still, the thought of dealing with such medical pestering was too much. Such scars would hardly show next to the ones given to her by the bear twelve years prior, deep trenches dug on the right side of her face.

Finally, she reached the part of her routine she’d been anticipating. Retrieving a brush staged just so on the edge of a nightstand, she walked in bare feet to the corner of her room where the vanity sat. With dark wood and fine pieces of colored glass decorating the edges of the wide mirror, it was easily the finest piece of furniture she owned. A gift from the Cheery Baron, on the occasion of her twenty-fifth birthday. She sat at that mirror and worked the knots of the day from her hair every night, smoothing it until it shone like silk, indistinguishable from the color and feel of her nightgown.

Slowly, with a face so carefully stoic it might have been carved from stone, Ursule took a seat and examined her reflection.

Nearly all of her hair was gone. Roughly hewn, by the same blade that had broken her mask, it hung behind her ears and at the nape of her neck in thick clumps. For a moment, she felt a pang of loss, reaching up to feel the blunted strands with a hand. Then she remembered the pain. She could still feel the sudden jolt as the briar snagged in her hair, pulling as if it were made up of clawed, bony hands, desperately trying to wrench her off her horse. Perhaps they were hands. She had no way of knowing what sort of power the Horned Knight had over his section of the forest. For a moment, she’d struggled, desperately trying to free herself without any success – and then she’d heard singing.

Between the ache of her scalp, the hunt thundering through her body, and the Wayward Bard’s solemn voice echoing through the trees, she chose this. The matter was closed, the cards were played, and there was no use in regretting her decision.

If anything, it made her nightly brushing pass much more quickly. She supposed that was all right.

A familiar rap echoed at Ursule’s door, several jaunty-sounding knocks in quick succession. The pattern was a code, enthusiastically created and solely used by the Bard, who insisted it added an element of drama to their liaisons. On her good days, she accepted it as one of his quirks, and on her bad she used her foreknowledge to decide whether she felt like dealing with his particular brand of merriment. Today, she wasn’t sure. They had only parted less than an hour before, when she’d left him to retell the story of his dreadful kidnapping and dramatic rescue for a third time.

By the second knock, much shorter, she had made up her mind. Putting her brush down on the vanity, next to a pair of scissors and a thin stiletto dagger, she raised her voice: “Enter.”

He slipped in, with all the care and stealth of a man of his profession, and shut the door noiselessly behind him. His cheeks were flushed with wine, no doubt pressed upon him by courtiers begging to hear more details of his story, but his gaze and his hands were perfectly steady. Studying Ursule’s reflection through the mirror, the Bard walked slowly forward until he stood just behind her. This close, she could see the fine wrinkles in his face, and several imperfections he preferred to cover with makeup. He was barefaced, just like her. “My lady,” he said softly, resting his palms on the back of her chair, just above her shoulders. Not touching, but close enough to suggest the weight of his hands. “My champion.”

“I didn’t win a tourney for you,” Ursule said, unable to keep a little snap out of her tone. She hadn’t meant it, but she would not take it back. A Marquis never ate her words. “Champion hardly seems the right descriptive.”

He didn’t wince, to his credit. Lesser men might have wet themselves for fear of her displeasure. Instead, he simply watched her with keen, dark eyes. “My heroine, then.” His voice was soft, even cajoling. “My gracious patron, my goddess of the hunt, vanquisher of shadowed evils. And,” the Bard added, almost as an afterthought, “my faithful lover. That’s certainly one up you have on me.”

She nearly snorted, stifling the noise out of habit. The attempt at nonchalance was appreciated, even if she knew that this was why he came. Their public reunion had left much to be desired. “It is as you said,” she replied, after only a moment’s silence. “We are lucky someone knew what happened to you. You might have been lost, a blow to poets and carousers everywhere.”

To her surprise, the gentle jibe had no effect on the downturn of his mouth.

“I shamed you,” he said.

The words were heavy. He meant them.

Ursule sighed and leaned back in her seat, purposefully settling her shoulders so that they grazed his fingertips. Through the gown, she felt his grip tighten and relax. She had once relished wielding her control over men so easily, bringing them to their knees with little more than a look or a careful brush of hands. They were weak, she had told herself, and deserved whatever their machinations brought them. Now, she thought she might know how they had felt. Lucky she’d chosen a man with very little personal ambition.

“If there is anything I understand,” she said, “it is how to bear the burden of shame. I don’t care if you take other lovers to your bed. Does that not come with the territory of being a bard?”

The Bard’s hand flexed again, dipping slightly lower behind Ursule’s back. “For some,” he murmured. His head bent, eyes still fixed on hers. “Not all. It needn’t be my territory, if you don’t wish it so.”

He was still handsome, she thought. That was what she had liked about him in the first place, when they had met before her mother died. Older by an amount he refused to specify, too smart for his own good, and with a not inconsiderable air of impropriety clinging to him like tavern smoke, her girlish affection for him was ill-advised to say the least. She had expected nothing to come of it, especially after the years brought her to Serault’s seat of authority and cooled the silly passions of her youth. Waking with him in her bed, two months before the Divine’s crucial visit, was especially unexpected.

She didn’t mind surprises, now and then.

“So long as you’re mine at the end of the day.”

Her Bard laughed, his volume the only sign he had had too much to drink. Ursule thought of her guards, posted at the end of the hall, but then they would have seen him walk by. It was worth it, to see the familiar smile. “All of Serault is yours,” he chuckled, “at your disposal. I count myself lucky to be included in the first place.”

Obviously intending that as his affirmation, he finally freed his hands and settled them gently about her neck. His thumbs stroked just under the curve of her jaw, the heel of his palm warm against her skin. She hummed, letting her eyes half-close with pleasure – but only half. One never truly knew, with bards.

“What was it I said, earlier?” he asked suddenly, nearly startling her. “About your lips?”

She had to consider this for a moment, struggling backward through the haze of the day’s events. “‘Sweeter than an Amaranthine red,’” she said slowly, remembering. “Your favorite, and a high compliment. Pre-written?”

“No, in fact, I actually meant it. Rather spur of the moment thing to say, isn’t it? I ought to write that down.”

Reaching over her shoulder, Ursule took hold of the back of the Bard’s head and pulled him down. The angle was odd, and strained her neck, but she pressed her mouth against his anyway. Her intent was to kiss him with a ferocious passion, to reward him for the compliment, to finish asserting her claim over him – he was not the peasant girl’s, nor the Knight’s, he was _hers_ – but he didn’t have the same plan. With the first touch of her teeth to his lip, he drew back and began again, carefully leading her to a slow, simmering pace. They stayed just so until he stood straight again, complaining of his advanced age and bad back.

She was tired, as well. It had been a long day.

After the Bard undressed, folding his clothes carefully to avoid wrinkles and leaving them where he might grab them in a rush if necessary, they both retired to her bed. Ursule kept night shirts for his purpose, tucked in the back of an armoire, but when she offered, he paused in the middle of shucking his pants and waggled his brow. All this earned him was a groan. Still, once he’d covered himself to the waist with her sheets, she decided this was good enough and settled herself against him. With the mood he was in, she expected his hands to begin wandering right away, all protests regarding aches or exhaustion forgotten.

Instead, he threaded his fingers through her hair, humming discontentedly when the strands ended sooner than he expected. “I didn’t think to ask what happened,” he said, tugging gently on a forelock. “Surely this wasn’t done on purpose.”

Ursule did not like this attention. It reminded her of the momentary swoop in her gut when she first saw the damage done, her impulse to mourn something so inconsequential. It was a weakness. Better to shave it all off and have done than deal with attempts at self-pity, or worse, pity from others. Maker only knew what the Dowager would say.

This, however, was her Bard. He meant nothing by his inquiry.

“It caught as I was coming to your rescue,” she said, shifting so that his grip fell away. He draped the arm around her shoulder instead. “I knew by your singing that you were close, so I sheared it with my knife and left the braid dangling in the brambles behind me.”

“Quite the sacrifice for one so useless to you,” the Bard sighed. “Can’t imagine it was worth it. I loved your hair.”

“It’s only hair,” Ursule said firmly. The Bard shrugged in response, lapsing into a silence that told her he was a little offended. She was not sorry, but soon the quiet grew rather unbearable. Turning ever so slightly, she pressed into him tighter under the guise of burrowing further under the blankets. When he realized what she was doing, she saw his mustache twitch. “Grand Duchess Florianne has cut her hair short, and in a new style,” she continued, as if she were not teasing him. “Or so the gossipmongers say. I shall model myself after her. Perhaps we may start a new trend.”

“Would you have me cut mine short as well?” the Bard asked. He watched with a shrewd eye as she draped her hand over his leg, rolling the sheet covering him between two fingers. It was a threat, one he anticipated greatly.

“Your vanity would not survive the barber, I’m afraid.”

“Too right,” he huffed, a distracted imitation of a laugh. Perhaps his thoughts were elsewhere, she thought, creeping her hand a little closer to the apex of his thighs. “I doubt I could suffer the loss so gracefully as you. Are we through talking about hair?”

"If you would like."

“Thank the Maker.”

With that, the Wayward Bard seized her around the waist and pulled her into his lap, seeking her lips greedily with his own. She complied, but pressed her hands firmly against his shoulders, keeping him pinned to the headboard. Power was heady, and hers in all things. Her Bard knew this, and relished it. They understood each other. He expected nothing else from her, which pleased her to no end.

After they had both been satisfied and the candles all guttered out, the Bard paused his creeping climb up Ursule’s neck and hummed thoughtfully.

“Will the Horned Knight take offense, do you think?” he murmured against her skin. “At your rescue?”

She sighed, and spoke barely above a whisper. “The question is not if. But it does not matter. Should it come to war, it comes to war. He could not take you from me.”

The next day, Ursule caught sight of the Wayward Bard in one of her gardens, plucking away at his instrument and singing to himself. More verses about the glory of Serault, she thought, content to leave him to it. As she walked away, seeking out the Scornful Sorceress, she thought she heard her own name drift across the courtyard, as well as the Horned Knight’s.

The thought of this song performed where the curly-haired peasant girl could hear put an unkind smile on her face.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @salutationtothestars.


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